


Sunshine in a Jar

by foux_dogue



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Anal Sex, Blood Drinking, Bottom Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Dhampir Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Dimitri behaving badly, Feeder Felix, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-AM route, Rimming, Vampire Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Vampire Sylvain Jose Gautier, noncon elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:27:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24846037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foux_dogue/pseuds/foux_dogue
Summary: There had always been a promise shared between House Fraldarius and House Blaiddyd; a divine oath both drawn and paid in blood. Rodrigue had given his to Lambert. Glenn had been offered to Dimitri. Felix inherited the task of satisfying the prince’s hunger, but when war comes to Faerghus, a moment of madness forces a crack in the foundations of the families’ long-held bond.Sylvain breaks it.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 220





	Sunshine in a Jar

People often said that House Fraldarius was fated to serve the noble Blaiddyd line, but the better term was _made_. Just like the careful cultivation of an ancient grapevine grown over an arbor, so too had countless generations of black-haired, snow-born men and women been carefully pruned and bred and coddled in order to perfect their taste. His brother had no doubt been the perfect vintage: strong, bright, full-bodied. Felix was the lesser, his grapes picked too early, maybe, or grown in too rocky soil. Not that it mattered. Now Glenn’s blood was grave dust. Even vinegar was better than swallowing rot.

“Get on with it, Boar,” Felix hissed. He wrenched his collar open and found his seat at Dimitri’s desk before the prince had the chance to swing his door closed. Dimitri sighed, his fingers clenched to hide his anxious fidgeting as he circled on him.

“If you are in a hurry, Felix, and would prefer a different time—”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Felix snapped. He skewered Dimitri with a sour glare before glancing away. “I know my duty and you know yours, so let’s get on with it.”

“Very well,” Dimitri answered slowly. He stepped forward to wedge himself between the desk and its matching chair. Felix reveled in his discomfort. He didn’t have so many weapons to brandish in this battle of theirs, but what he did wield he’d long ago mastered.

“Thank you for what you’ve come to offer me,” Dimitri said, a well-practiced phrase that meant nothing much at all. Felix rolled his eyes. “I appreciate it,” he added more quietly.

Felix didn’t grip at his knees as his temper flared, but he wanted to. _I appreciate it_. The feral bastard. This whole charade had nothing to do with appreciation. And even if it did, what value was that to him? Was that supposed to make the feeling of Dimitri’s fangs in his throat any more tolerable? No, of course not. It would hurt, just like it always hurt, and Felix would count his breaths to ten and ten and ten again and pretend that he wasn’t there. They’d been doing this since Glenn had died and feeding Dimitri had become Felix’s inheritance. It’d never been the give-and-take of something grateful; it was a curse. There was no point in hiding it. Dimitri’s woeful, doe-eyed look meant that he knew it, too.

Felix felt the heat of the prince’s breath first. The damp of it made a chill slither down his spine. Next came the prick of Dimitri’s fangs in the spot where his neck met his shoulder. Felix shut his eyes and steadied his breath; _one, two, three, four_. This part wasn’t the worst, but he’d never grown used to it — the sudden jolt and the warning in his brain afterwards screaming _you’ve been hurt. Five, six, seven._ Dimitri nodded forward, sinking deeper into him. Felix fisted the fabric of his trousers with a white-knuckled grip.

 _Relax_ , his father had once coached him. _It’s important to relax. It doesn’t have to be a battle_. That’s why they’d been bred the way they had, after all. A simple man would swoon and soon die under a vampire’s fangs, and no matter how gentle the creature sipping on them. A long-dead Fraldarius had rectified this conundrum by seducing their fanged hunter instead of feeding them. Generations of careful marriages had made Felix into what he was; more man than vampire, but not enough that he couldn’t weather Dimitri’s weekly feedings. The short, pathetic fangs in his own mouth only served as a reminder of this birthright. _Relax_ , Rodrigue had said, and him once a sharp-toothed king’s favored right hand.

How the _fuck_ was he supposed to relax?

Felix felt the swipe of Dimitri’s tongue and realized that he’d lost track of his count. All the same, he was certain that they were at least one set of tens too short. Dimitri never drank enough. No doubt it was out of some misplaced sense of generosity. What it really meant was that they had to schedule more frequent feedings. Felix would’ve preferred that he suck him dry.

“Thank you,” Dimitri said again, pulling back once he was satisfied that the mysterious magic of his syrupy saliva had transformed the snake-bites on Felix’s skin into a set of pale, dotted scars. His shoulders were freckled with them. No doubt Felix would be nothing but scar tissue once he’d finally had the chance to die.

“Hm,” he grunted. He tugged his collar back into place and hastily fastened his buttons. Next he rose from his chair and, without a glance backwards at his liege, paced briskly for the door.

“Felix,” Dimitri said. His voice was small. It reminded Felix of the boy he’d been before he’d revealed his love for spilled blood on ruined fields. Felix had loved that boy like a brother, maybe even more than the one he’d had. That wasn’t why he stopped and listened for Dimitri’s voice. It was because he’d been made to be obedient, and to be pleasant on the tongue.

“I...” Dimitri started. Felix heard the desk creak as he shifted his weight. _I’m sorry_ , he’d said before, and would perhaps say again. _I miss the way we were_. Felix hated that one even more. What was _missing_ when the things they missed were dead? He had no interest in mourning with Dimitri, especially not the way that the prince did, all blank-eyes and low, lost moans when he thought he was alone.

“What is it?” Felix snapped finally, staring over his bristled shoulder. Dimitri glanced away under Felix’s gaze to hide beneath his golden hair.

“I wish you a good evening,” Dimitri managed. Felix scoffed. He reached for the door and slammed it behind him before either of them had the chance to say more.

* * *

Like most other things in the Kingdom, Faerghus’ hierarchy was obtuse. Primitive, even. The Blaiddyds were the strongest line tempered in the north and so of course they’d been placed at the very top of the Kingdom’s hoarfrost society. Their teeth were an obscene reminder of this fact: long, thick, sharp. It was a wonder Dimitri could close his mouth, Felix often thought, and a distraction whenever he bothered to simper some sort of retort when they found themselves together. _High vampire_ , they called people like him, although it was his family who’d coined the term themselves. House Dominic, as one of Blaiddyd’s many vassals, boasted short, juvenile canines; threadbare Galatea had thin kittenish things. All manner _high_ had its _lower_ counterpart, after all, and so here were Faerghus’ own. 

House Gautier had always been the exception. Like his father before him, the Margrave was an opportunist of the most ambitious sort. Gautiers married off their children based on the careful calculation of power and wealth, and power and wealth in the Kingdom meant a monstrous maw. Sylvain was the proof and prize of their gamble. He was strong, tall, broad; healthy even when he staggered his feedings, and alluring enough to never have to hunt for his next meal. Vampires were just another breed of animal, after all. The Margrave’s son was good at killing and better at eating, and so despite the fact that he knelt at Blaiddyd heels, there wasn’t much that made him different from Dimitri.

He had sharp fucking teeth.

Felix hated it. Sylvain had always been a easy friend of the sort that Felix didn’t really deserve, as bitter and guarded as he’d become after Glenn. Sylvain had earned his trust — his affection, even — but instead all Felix could think about when he watched him in his easy conquest of Garreg Mach was that he was just another monster. Another wolf and Felix the sheep, and the worst of all of it was that when Dimitri made his apologetic feedings Felix couldn’t help but wonder if Sylvain’s teeth would feel any different if they were to tear apart his fleece.

“Felix? You with us, buddy?”

Felix’s chin jerked against his palm, unsettling the anchor of his elbow from his desk and crumpling the pages strewn beneath it. Sylvain made a sympathetic noise just as Manuela tutted from the front of the class. Felix scowled, making every inch of his grimace as icy as possible as he did his best to smooth his notes flat. Sylvain laughed and gave him a goodnatured pat on the shoulder. The phantom pinch of Dimitri’s newest bite mark pulsed a finger’s distance away from Sylvain’s touch. Felix shrugged himself free of him and did his best to ignore the heat he’d left behind; the rakish way he combed through his shaggy hair, and how the pallor of their cursed brood didn’t look so deadly on his skin; the gape of his clumsy-buttoned collar and the shape of his collarbones beneath; the porcelain perfection of his teeth when he yawned; how he looked like he could swallow all of them, and what it meant to want to be swallowed.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said. 

Felix ignored him and drew the prince’s gaudy tent closed. It wasn’t a good time, but not like there was ever anything auspicious about drinking blood. Their work of clearing bandits from the woods ringing the monastery had turned to violence, and that violence had left Dimitri bruised and surrounded by the dead. Mercedes’ white magic would only burn him further, and that went for Manuela’s vulneraries, too. Here was what Felix had been made for — or what his brother had been made for, really, and Felix an unexpected secondary prize made precious by bad luck. He shrugged off his jacket and sat without ceremony cross-legged on the ground.

“You’re hurt,” Dimitri contended suddenly. Felix felt the burn of something dashed diagonal across his chest just as Dimitri said the words. He groped over the blistered patch of skin boiling hot beneath his shirt and vaguely remembered a thoron firecracker from their battle before.

“It’s nothing,” Felix insisted. He heard Dimitri sigh.

“It isn’t,” the prince replied. “It’s not right. You should tend to yourself first.”

“Shut up,” Felix snarled. “It reeks in here. Have your fill and let me leave if you’re so godsdamned worried about being _right_.”

“I’m not worried about...” Dimitri attempted. He stopped himself, eyes dimming as he no doubt felt himself crashing into the invisible walls Felix had long ago built between them. He limped forward to sit beside him, careful not to jostle his own bandaged arm.

“Felix,” he attempted, his voice low and soothing, the sort he used when he eased the horses spooked by his dark scent, “let me help you. Please.”

Felix felt the ghost of Dimitri’s tongue at the suggestion. A cold nausea roiled in his gut. He turned at the waist, too quick for Dimitri to stop him, and snatched the knife lashed to his thigh. The blade flashed steel-grey in the gloom as he cut into the meat of his own shoulder.

“Drink it,” he growled. “Or let it go to waste. You think I care what you do?”

“Felix,” Dimitri repeated miserably. Felix watched as his pupils sucked out the blue in his eyes. _Just animals_ , he reminded himself as Dimitri bent sideways to lap up the blood pooling in the cleft of his collarbone; just animals, and the rumors were that the new professor and her golden-caped class had burned Miklan that day, or maybe it was the day before. Would Sylvain feast now that his brother was dead, or would he starve?

“Alright,” Dimitri finished, sitting back on his heels to wipe daintily at his lips as he looked Felix over. His cheeks were flushed with color. It was a strange part of drinking — his body fooled, if however briefly, that it was warm and full of life instead of simply stealing from what Felix and his human ancestors had given him. Felix had caught Sylvain looking like that on occasion, careening back from the village with a lilt in his step and a whistle between his lips. He had freckles. Only then, only for a moment, but they would be there, like brown sugar scattered across the bridge of his nose. Maybe from his time spent riding under the sun, Felix sometimes wondered, that warm, cheery light no competition for the silvery chill of his undead skin. They made him look young.

“Please let me help you,” Dimitri tried again. Felix hissed his rebuttal and eased his aching shoulder back into his jacket.

The freckles made Sylvain look young. His warm brown eyes made him sweet. But when he charmed those village girls and drank from their slender, pretty necks he killed them, so what in the hell was it all for?

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Sylvain said. Felix huffed and shook his head. He cleaned the gore from the edge of his blade and tried to pretend that he couldn’t feel the weight of Sylvain’s honey gaze. 

“I should’ve listened to you,” Sylvain insisted. He pulled his lance free from its wedge between a dead man’s ribs and swung it to rest against his shoulder. “About Dima.”

“Don’t call him that,” Felix snapped. He sheathed his sword and lurched down from the mound that they’d mounted in order to finish their work of clearing cutthroats from the foggy glen. “Dima is dead. You’ve seen the man he is now.”

“I have,” Sylvain insisted, his voice unusually stern. He gripped Felix by the arm. His strength was inevitable, just like Dimitri’s — even if he’d wanted to, Felix couldn’t run. “Just that...Just that I thought you were _exaggerating_ , you know? Things were rough between you at the monastery, everyone could see that, but it’s not like you’re some sunbeam when you’re with the rest of us.”

“You’re saying that this is _my_ fault?”

Felix turned with his shoulders nearly bunched to his ears and fought the urge to swing his fists. Sylvain waved his palms at him in return, all contrition. 

“No! No, of course not. Listen,” Sylvain insisted, carding his fingers through his hair as he did, the gesture no less boyish than it’d been when they’d been children; and no less eerie, bloodied as he was, his face flushed and drunken from feasting on their kill. “I should’ve listened to you, that’s what I’m saying. You know how I get when I get my nose stuck in things.”

“You’re a dog,” Felix agreed stonily. Sylvain laughed.

“Yeah, I guess. And maybe one who’s too optimistic.”

Sylvain steadied his hands on hips and looked across the bloodied glen. _Optimistic_ was the right word for what they’d done. _Naive_ was another one. Of course, Felix had followed Sylvain when he’d suggested that they chase the rumors about a golden-haired monster living in the Ithan wood, and no matter that they were in the midst of a war, or that they were losing it, or that Dimitri was supposed to be dead. Sylvain wasn’t the only one of them who was a fool.

“You don’t need to stay,” Sylvain added. His voice dipped low. “You can go. I won’t tell them that you were here.”

 _You can run_ , that’s what he meant. But if there was something that Felix had learned, it was that no one could run from the dead.

“He already knows,” Felix sighed. Sylvain glanced over at him, perhaps surprised by his honesty. He looked like he’d just been kicked. Maybe he really was a dog. Maybe they both were; wide-eyed and begging for the hand that would feed them. “He’ll find me.”

Felix looked up and away. The canopy above their head was naked from the season. It was easy to lose track of things like that. He’d never really felt the cold. That was why they all lived up here, he supposed; their thick, molasses blood immune to winter’s prying fingers. Still, somehow he was still chilled. He could feel it in the marrow of his bones. _It doesn’t need to be a battle_ , his father had said.

“Felix...”

Footfalls in the wood ahead. He followed the shape of something blue and hulking in the gloom. There was red and gold as well — Annette with Mercedes beside her, and Ingrid four paces away, and all of them staggered in a wide orbit around Dimitri’s dark nucleus. None of them were speaking. He could taste the tension of their silence on his tongue, however far he and Sylvain stood from the scene. He felt the drag of a lead around his neck. It tightened with every breath. Not a battle, and him not a soldier, but a ram, and the mess of Dimitri’s cape an altar, and his piercing blue eye a blade.

Felix strode forward into the wood.

* * *

Maybe he was wrong. 

They marched east for Fraldarius, the last stronghold against Cornelia’s stretch. Somehow they’d convinced Dimitri to follow them. Felix had waited with strangled breath in each evening that’d come after, but the fallen prince left him in peace. Dimitri dined on thieves instead, and deer, Annette suspected, having stumbled upon the wizened corpses in one of her trips to find Mercedes something to eat. Otherwise he was a silent sentinel following in Sylvain’s wake as the other man cut their path for them astride his destrier. Not that Sylvain’s trailblazing was necessary. They all knew the way ahead. It’d been Ingrid’s bridal procession, once, when she’d been given to Glenn’s hand, and an anxious carriage ride linking Fhirdiad to the east, filled with little heirs all eager to tumble together with tree-branch swords. Once Sylvain had skirted between these very trees when he’d run from Gautier to Fraldarius, seeking refuge from Miklan’s bruising hands.

They marched and made camp in familiar places. It was a quiet business, although they broke the silence with the occasional memory recounted at night, all of them ringing the fire. Each time one would be absent; Annette or Sylvain or Ingrid slipping away to find the nearest village to pilfer. They wouldn’t be met with resistance here. The people of the Kingdom understood the cost of their fealty. Felix and Mercedes would share skinny hares, each exceptional in their task of ignoring what all of that meant. Dimitri disappeared, but he always came back. It was easy to miss him when he was there — a shadow amidst shadows and nothing more. 

“How is Rodrigue?” Sylvain asked one night. It was late. Dimitri and Ingrid were both gone. Annette had long ago fallen asleep against Mercedes’ shoulder. Mercedes too had nodded off, her arms wrapped protectively around the other woman. They looked like a sculptor’s take on affection carved in stone, lit as they were by the campfire’s warm flicker. It made Felix feel a little better, somehow.

“As he always is,” Felix answered. He stared into the fire, hypnotized by the embers. “Overworked and overconfident.”

Sylvain huffed a breath of laughter.

“Sounds about right.” A pause. “When were you last in Fraldarius?”

Felix counted the days with tapping fingers against his crossed arms.

“Four months, nearly.”

“He’ll be happy to see you.”

Felix glanced sideways at him. Sylvain looked back with apologetic eyes. Felix rolled his own. Rodrigue would no doubt forget he’d sired anything once he saw Dimitri again. What was the point in lying?

“ _I_ was happy to see you,” Sylvain amended. He nearly sounded sheepish. It was enough to make Felix turn towards him more properly.

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” Sylvain continued. Now he took his turn to stare into the fire. It filled his face with the warmth he lacked. Felix gathered the courage not to look away. “Two years?”

“Two years,” Felix agreed.

“It wouldn’t kill you to write, you know,” Sylvain drawled. “Or answer my letters, at least.”

“I read them,” Felix said. The words barely slipped through the squeeze of his throat.

Sylvain nodded. It started slow but then it built until his body rocked along with it. He kept his eyes on the fire, newly narrowed with the pinch of the wince spread across his face. For some reason Felix nodded, too.

Gods. He hated this fucking war.

* * *

They were close to the duchy, now. Felix could smell it in the air. Home was the granite in Fraldarius’ soil and the salt hint of the bay that’d made them rich, paired with the licorice of the evergreens that bowed ancient and resilient against the winter cold. It filled his lungs with every breath as he drilled. He let his mind wander, half-drunk from nostalgia and the pleasant monotony of his footwork. Ingrid sat off to the side of their little campsite’s clearing, busy polishing her own weapon while she made a lazy observation of Felix’s swordplay. She’d started to hum recently. He recognized the melody of some simple sort of nursery song. 

Sylvain had left to hunt at dawn. Mercedes and Annette had since retreated to their tent, the former having recently caught a chill that had nearly driven the latter mad. _I’m alright, Annie,_ Mercedes had insisted, but so it goes. Dimitri was wherever Dimitri went during the daylight hours. It was nice to nearly be alone. Felix worked through another set of parries against an invisible foe, relishing the burn of his muscles and the second stanza of Ingrid’s song.

What would he tell his father, he wondered idly as he worked, suddenly reminded of his conversation with Sylvain the night before. He would have to tell him the truth, firstly; that the Kingdom was dying, maybe already dead. Rodrigue would be too distracted by Dimitri to believe him, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t owe him the report. The west was lost in its entirety, and the south had been burning for years. Leicester had grown bolder with the closing of the year. Maybe that meant that the east would be safe, but then again, maybe it meant that another hungry mouth had opened to bookend the Empire’s maw. It seemed to Felix that surrender was inevitable, although he wasn’t yet certain if it would come in the form of an alliance or through defeat.

“Your Highness,” Ingrid welcomed uneasily. Felix roused himself from his musing and turned to watch as Dimitri emerged from the late afternoon gloom. Dimitri looked terrible, just like he always did; haggard and starved. The banality of it was distracting enough that Dimitri was able to get too close to him before Felix could dart away.

“Dimitri!” Ingrid gasped.

With the second syllable Dimitri had already coiled his fingers around Felix’s wrist and squeezed hard enough for him to drop his sword. His other hand gripped Felix by the knot of his upswept hair. Dimitri twisted him into a painful arc despite Ingrid’s protests. Felix knew better than to struggle against the wall of armor at his back, but that didn’t stop a chattering charge of thoron to gather in his palms. Dimitri shrugged off the jolt like a horsefly.

“I was just speaking with your brother,” Dimitri rasped into his ear. His voice was strange: offbeat, disconnected, as if the sound was the echo to the words he’d really said. “He always asks about you, Felix. Always _pestering_.” 

“Dimitri,” Felix snarled through gritted teeth, “let me go.”

“He was sweeter. Did you know?” Dimitri’s hand slipped from Felix’s hair to scramble across his chest, clawing open the collar of the shirt Felix had stripped to earlier from the heat of his training. Felix watched the sail of one of his buttons in the air. His eyes settled on Ingrid afterwards. Her gaze was on him over her shoulder as she dashed from the clearing into the forest. She looked sorry; tortured. _It’s alright_ , he thought, although the words made a tear rip open in his gut; _run away_. She could never hope to stop Dimitri. Why try?

“Get on with it,” Felix growled. The words were old and hollow. He’d expected it, hadn’t he? It was only a matter of time. And how many binary scars did he already have scattered across his shoulders? It didn’t matter. He could manage. _It isn’t a battle. Relax._

Dimitri bowed forward and sunk his teeth into Felix’s throat. A spring of copper heat burbled into Felix’s mouth.

“No,” Felix coughed. Dimitri cocked his head to settle his bite deeper. _Never there_ , they’d once been told. He stiffened against Dimitri’s inescapable hold, suddenly acutely aware that the slightest sag of his body would make the prince tear out his jugular and the rest of everything that kept him alive. _So what do you call this if it isn’t_ tearing, a sardonic voice insisted desperately inside Felix’s head. He fixated on the rabbit-quick pulse of the vein teased between Dimitri’s teeth and realized with an agonizing horror that he didn’t want to die.

“ _Dimitri!_ ”

Felix’s eyelids fluttered as he felt Dimitri’s jaw clench. The iron grip on his wrist loosened enough to let him swoon slightly leftwards. _Don’t move_ , he tried to insist, but his body disobeyed. By some miracle Dimitri let him fall. Felix crumpled to his knees, dragging a drunken hand against his throat as he willed each inch of himself upright. The world had become spattered with blurry shapes. He saw a flash of green velvet and silver plate; heard a horrible, bestial hiss challenge behind him and be answered at his front. A pair of hands gripped at him. He couldn’t fight them. What a fucking farce. He’d been training all his life; what was the point if he couldn’t fight?

“Felix, _fuck_ ,” a voice rumbled, followed after with another hair-raising growl. The earth lurched away from beneath him. He felt the sway of quick footsteps rocking him from side to side. The naked canopy trailed above his head in a grey-and-black checker. It would’ve been nicer if it’d been sunny; nicer if they’d made it properly to Fraldarius soil.

“Felix, _Felix_ ,” the voice rambled. Trembling fingers flitted across his shoulders. He realized that there was something solid beneath him, now, and an old, moldered smell in his nose. His head bobbed bonelessly backwards against a rough edge behind him. He hissed at the dagger-edged pain in his throat as it tugged tighter from the move.

“Shit. _Gods_. Sorry — fuck — _sorry_.”

A pair of eyes, honey-brown but nearly black from their blown pupils. Stupid, shaggy red hair. Sylvain loomed over him, close enough that Felix could feel the brush of his breath against his face. His mouth was parted slightly around the sharp length of his fangs. _They were all just animals_. Hot tears beaded in Felix’s eyes. He realized that they were made from relief. At least it would be him. Not home but nearly, and out of everyone, at least it was him.

Sylvain’s tongue swiped slow and hot along Felix’s throat. He could feel him choke on it like a hound grown too greedy with a meal. Felix closed his eyes and waited for the tear of his teeth. Instead his head swam as Sylvain pulled away, abandoning him to his dizzy slump.

“Sorry, Felix,” Sylvain babbled again. The chocolatey smell of the forest fell away under the sudden subtle stench of something spoiled. “It’ll taste terrible, but you need to...Sorry.”

Slickness against his lips. Felix fought against the lead weight of his lashes to focus on the white stripe blurred across his face. An arm. Sylvain’s, and streaked with something dark. Black beads rolling backwards from his wrist.

“Come on,” Sylvain growled, his voice made mean with desperation. “Open your mouth.”

He obeyed. They were all just animals. They were all just dogs. His heart hammered at the strange taste filling his mouth. It was blood — old and thickened with the cold and made from a patchwork taste. His father had always told him not to. There was no reason for a dhampir to waste spilled blood. It made him dizzier than he’d been before; made him want as if he’d never known wanting since he’d been born.

“Better? Hey,” Sylvain breathed when Felix’s eyes flickered upwards towards his downcast face. “Hey, hey,” he soothed, his voice cracking. He scowled when Felix pulled back. “That’s not enough,” he insisted, his cooing turned to stone again.

“It’s the wrong angle,” Felix told him, dragging a shaky hand along his lips as he did. He took stock of where they were now that Sylvain’s stodgy blood had given him back his sight. They were hidden behind the bulk of a massive fallen oak dotted with yellow mushrooms and fuzzy moss. Sylvain had crowded him against the tree, one arm planted firmly to brace him upright. Felix hadn’t lied; it was awkward to be crushed beneath him and tipped in acute directions to chase the bend of his dripping wrist. But Sylvain hadn’t, either. The few mouthfuls Felix had stolen from him hadn’t been enough to spook the dark fatigue dragging down his limbs.

“Okay.” Sylvain frowned. He had that look of his he used when he was studying their maps. “Well. Let’s try this.”

He eased his arms away from Felix only after he was convinced that he wouldn’t topple over. Next he fiddled with the collar of his doublet, his fingers still as clumsy as they’d been before.

“What are you doing?” Felix couldn’t muster the usual dourness for his tone, but it seemed to have the same affect. Sylvain smiled thinly and worked another button loose.

“You won’t hurt me,” he reassured him, skipping too far ahead in a discussion Felix wasn’t even certain he was willing to have. Sylvain read his look well. “I’ve just eaten. It’s alright.”

“...It doesn’t need to be your neck,” Felix offered finally. Sylvain huffed a breath through his nose.

“Let’s talk about that later. Come on. Do you want me to help you up?”

“No,” Felix snapped. His voice thinned with the effort to bend forward. It was better than admitting the truth; that moving wasn’t as bewildering as _biting_. His teeth weren’t like Sylvain’s. They had sharp points, but they were more human than not. How was he supposed to drink when he was built like that?

Sylvain gripped him by the collar and drug him forward before he could bull-rush his way through the question. Now that he’d tasted the chimera of Sylvain’s blood Felix could smell it, too; something sweet and feminine and another, darker, muskier. None of it smelled like Sylvain, not that Sylvain had much of a scent at all. Somehow Felix still craved it. He heard Sylvain gasp when he sunk his teeth into the unblemished skin stretched across his broad shoulder.

 _One, two, three_ , some hidden part of himself reminded him; the rest of him careened with the heat dripping like bitter honey down his throat. _Four, five, six_ , and it had pooled into his stomach, molten, nearly serpentine. He moaned and felt Sylvain answer through the tremor of his skin between his teeth. _Seven, eight, nine._ Felix’s fingers skimmed greedily along Sylvain’s sides. Sylvain shivered against his touch. _Ten._

The riled hunger in Felix’s chest broke apart into a sudden, aching tenderness when he heard Sylvain’s breath grow ragged. Alarmed, Felix drug his tongue across Sylvain’s torn skin in a poor mimicry of what’d been done to him and lurched back. Sylvain stared back at him bleary-eyed. His lips were cocked into a fragile smile.

“I thought you were going to die,” he croaked. He sounded like the boy who Felix had once fished from the bottom of a well. There was a dark ribbon of his blood splashed across his lip from when he’d bitten open his wrist for him.

“Sylvain,” Felix said. The small, groaned word had the weight of everything packed inside it: treason, fear, anger, heartache; a lifetime of unspoken intentions. He tasted Sylvain’s sour blood again before he realized that he was kissing him. He’d often daydreamed that it would be a hungry, sultry thing, but now they’d both been drained to exhaustion. What they’d earned was something too quick to be called anything but chaste. Afterwards Felix sagged against him. His heartbeat kicked against the empty stillness inside Sylvain’s chest. Sylvain wrapped his arms around him and pressed his cheek against his still-bloodied shoulder.

“Dimitri,” Felix whispered after a time. Sylvain stiffened. “I can’t...I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“Alright,” said Sylvain, although he didn’t have the right. But what did it matter, anyway? The Kingdom was dying. What would it do for Felix to pay homage to the dead? “Of course. You won’t.”

* * *

They continued on to the duchy. Felix struggled to take a step without stumbling over Ingrid or Sylvain, the both of them orbiting him so tightly that he could barely take a breath without a mouthful of their hair. Mercedes and Annette weren’t so far behind. The latter had been singing cheery songs since sunrise. It seemed a little strange to hear her pretty voice in a place like that, but Felix appreciated it all the same. 

Something had changed between him and Sylvain, although neither had gathered the gumption to address it. The lesser points were also there: Felix could hear Mercedes’ heartbeat much better than he had before. Here was another reason why Rodrigue had been so insistent that he gather his energy from stews and roasts instead of unlucky serfs, Felix now understood. Objectively he also knew that Sylvain’s corpse-blood had been revolting, but he couldn’t stop himself from searching for the last taste of it on his tongue. Better that Annette was there to hover around Mercedes if he got too close. Better that he was still alive, too, despite all that. Lesser point number two was that Sylvain looked dragged down and drawn out. No doubt he’d steal a Fraldarius stablehand as soon as they arrived home.

Lesser point number three was Dimitri, although Felix supposed that he was also a figure of immense enormity. The prince had realized what he’d done moments after they’d left him behind, Ingrid had told him when he and Sylvain had limped back to their camp the night before. As if he were a different man, she’d said. He’d briefly begged Ingrid to kill him before he’d disappeared. Felix was too exhausted to worry about what that meant. He simply kept on marching until he saw the grey of Castle Fraldarius’ walls.

It was only when they’d made it to the courtyard that Felix realized Dimitri had beat them there. The prince was bowed in penitence before a bewildered Rodrigue, the elder man’s arms outstretched and trembling above Dimitri’s crumpled shoulders. The scene made Felix freeze. He felt Sylvain’s fingers close around his wrist.

“The young Lord Fraldarius,” one of the castle criers announced, startled as well, and too late to his duty. Felix didn’t blame him. They all looked starved. His father wasn’t any different. Felix turned and stormed towards a side door before Dimitri had the chance to stand.

“I’m tired,” was all that he offered to the meager menagerie scattered across the yard. “We’ve been marching for a long time.”

* * *

Finally alone, Felix washed the grime from his skin and dressed himself in moth-bitten clothes selected from his old, familiar wardrobe. There was dust frosting his bedroom desk. It seemed as though the duchy’s coffers were even more poor off than he’d imagined. That made him sigh. It must’ve been driving his father mad. Rodrigue had always been a humble man, but that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy being wealthy. 

Once he’d done a serviceable job of combing his hair without looking into a mirror, too bitter to look upon the new scar that must have made a mess of his mangled throat, Felix retreated to his bed. The sheets were musty, but at least they weren’t full of pillbugs like his bedroll. He didn’t expect to sleep. Still, there was something comforting in the idea of lying prone and silent with the familiarity of his childhood ceiling staring back at him. He eased himself into drowsing; did his best not to think about Sylvain’s eyes full of black-blown hunger. Felix had nearly shut his own when he heard the sound of footsteps in the hall.

They paced the width of his door twice before shuffling to a stop. The door creaked against the weight of a body. Felix listened to the scrape of boot heels against the floorboards and the faint shuffle of crumpled clothes. Fire gathered in his mouth. _Dimitri_. The fucking bastard.

Felix leapt from his bed before he’d had the chance to stop himself. There was no doubt he was throwing himself towards danger, but when had he ever run from it? Hadn’t he been tossed right into the teeth of dangerous things ever since he’d lost the shield of Glenn’s own sacrificial life? Besides, Dimitri could tear down the door. Even the castle’s ancient walls couldn’t stop him. If he meant to finish sucking Felix dry, at least Felix would be the one who chose to bring an end to it.

He wrenched the doorknob backwards, thinking with every motion about the pitiful reverence in his father’s eyes that afternoon in the courtyard. The door squealed as it was ripped open. A body tumbled backwards with a startled _wuh!_

“Hey, Felix,” Sylvain laughed from his sprawl, back against the threshold and limbs akimbo. Felix felt the dark anger in his chest shatter into something warmer. He still managed to roll his eyes when he stepped back a pace into the room.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, you know...Seeing the old sights.” Sylvain grinned. It was the shellacked smile he used when he was lying. Felix knew the truth, of course; he was there for the promise they’d made only the day before. He sighed and retreated further into his quarters, and left the door open to make his invitation clear. He’d sat at the edge of his bed by the time Sylvain had stood and brushed the grit from his clothes, borrowed things in Fraldarius blue that were all a little too short in the hem.

“Sorry. Did I wake you?”

“No,” Felix gritted out. For some reason a weight had suddenly gathered in his chest. Sylvain seemed to hear it pressing down on him. He closed the door.

“Are you alright?”

Felix intended to spit another bitter rebuttal, but was cut short by the dark circles under Sylvain’s eyes.

“You haven’t eaten,” he observed. Sylvain took on the bashful look of a boy caught with his finger in a pie.

“I’ll be fine. Tomorrow.”

“Dimitri won’t come for me here,” Felix lied. Sylvain winced. Apparently Felix wasn’t so convincing. “I don’t need you to be my guard dog.”

“Yes, you do,” Sylvain muttered. It was as sweet a sentiment as it was infuriating.

“You—”

“What else do I have left?” Sylvain flung his arms wide with the question. “Faerghus is _gone_ , Felix. Sreng will come and kill my father, it’s only a matter of time. Gautier will be glad to have them. Maybe their chieftains will at least give them something to eat. I have no king,” he added ruefully, the words dangerous even in the quiet room, “no family. I’m either feared or called a fool. Without you, I...” He trailed off, combing his frustration through his hair as he struggled for his next words. Felix gripped hard enough at his sheets that he was surprised they didn’t rip.

“Are you in love with me?” Felix mustered lowly. Sylvain’s lips quirked into a surprised shape.

“In love with you?” Sylvain echoed. He looked away, eyes settling on a pile of long-forgotten books squirreled away into a far corner. “I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “I don’t know if I _could_ know. We aren’t...It’s not the sort of thing we’re made for.”

“You’d kill a king for me,” Felix countered. Sylvain scoffed.

“All of them,” he agreed.

“Would you run? From Faerghus? Fodlan?”

“Desert?” Apparently regicide was easier to swallow than the idea of leaving their motherland behind. Sylvain considered the question for another heavy moment, gaze dipped low towards the floor.

“If you want it,” he promised finally. “Anywhere.” His answer was so earnest that Felix lost the nerve to ask more.

“It doesn’t matter,” Felix deflected lamely. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Sylvain considered him for a moment before he stepped two paces forward.

“Do you love me?” Sylvain asked. It was an innocent question, but Felix couldn’t shake the look of him tracking forward like a wolf after a hare. All of it made Felix smirk and toss his head. He looked away, eyes settling on the heavy drape of the curtains drawn across the far wall. Just like their first kiss, this moment of confession seemed anything but romantic. Maybe he’d been a fool to hope for anything else; had read too many of Ashe’s stories when he’d been young enough to believe them.

“Yes,” he said. He didn’t bother to whisper the word, guarded secret that it’d been. He heard Sylvain suck in a breath.

“For how long?”

Felix made a rueful sound. Since Sylvain had crawled into his bed to soothe him after his nightmares when they’d been little boys, he could tell him; after Sylvain had suffered through Felix’s childhood preference for Dimitri, still humoring Felix’s capricious moods despite the betrayal; from Felix’s first night spent as a squire, his thighs slicked with a shameful sweat as he stroked himself in his tent, mind filled with how it’d felt when Sylvain had hugged him to his chest the last time he’d said goodbye.

“Don’t be stupid,” he muttered. “I’ve always loved you.”

Sylvain knelt between his knees. He would’ve looked reverent if not for how his pupils had flooded his eyes. _He’s hungry_ , a voice inside Felix reminded him; the oldest one he had, born when his father had taught him how to survive.

“You should’ve told me,” Sylvain mused. He smoothed a timid touch along Felix’s thigh. He had a tremble in his fingers again, just like that time in the wood. It was strange, Felix thought.

“You knew,” Felix accused dryly. One of the corners of Sylvain’s lips quirked into a grin. It was enough to slip one of his fangs free. Felix’s eyes lingered on how the point pricked against the plush of his lower lip. He couldn’t help but remember how he’d tasted.

“Maybe,” Sylvain admitted. He tipped forward on his toes, his left hand joining the right to slink along Felix’s thighs. They stopped to linger high but not high enough, thumbs brushing one another as they teased circles through the thin fabric at the crotch of Felix’s pants. “Every time, you know, with everyone... I imagined them to be you.”

_Fuck._

Felix clawed him by the collar and drug him up onto the bed. Sylvain’s weight pressed them both backwards into the mattress. It made him dizzy; the sudden grind of their hips and how it anchored every scrap of his attention. Sylvain was already hard against him. Felix squirmed and reveled in the way Sylvain’s breath caught in his throat when Felix gathered the nerve to grip his ass and cant his body closer.

“Felix,” Sylvain said, his voice strangled enough to be a whine. “You smell so good.”

Sylvain slipped Felix’s shirt up from the hem, his hands palming covetously along Felix’s hipbones, next the flat plane of his stomach, the lowest rungs of his ribs. They were broad enough to touch at the fingertips in their greedy measure of his waist. Felix shivered from their cool chill; at the calluses rasping against his skin.

“I wish I hadn’t tasted you,” Sylvain breathed, his nose tracing an ambling line from the center of Felix’s ribcage to the first pink flush of a nipple. “It’s all I think about.”

“Then do it,” Felix gasped. Sylvain’s head bucked away, lips pulled back in a snarl.

“No,” he insisted. It almost seemed as though he was begging instead of ordering. _I’m not him_ , maybe he thought. _That monster you’ve been cursed to_. Felix didn’t want to listen. He slipped his hands between them instead, loosening the drawstring of Sylvain’s pants and flattening his fingers against his stomach to slip inside. First he found the coarseness of his hair, thin below his navel and growing thicker; next, finally — _finally_ , the touch of it flooding Felix with a shivery, molten heat — the thick base of his cock. Sylvain’s breath hitched against Felix’s collarbones as he pulled him free and gave him a tentative stroke. Felix couldn’t help but wonder, with what meager objectivity that he still had, if it’d dazed Sylvain to pool what little blood he had left into such a singular place.

“You’re big,” Felix admitted.

“ _Shit_ , Felix,” Sylvain groaned, his forehead knocking against Felix’s shoulder. “You’re so fucking...”

Felix cut him short by slicking his thumb to smear the bead of moisture gathered at his cockhead. Sylvain finally kissed him, then. It was what he’d hoped for before; the hunger of Sylvain’s thick tongue licking into him, teeth dragging dangerously at Felix’s lips as he sucked the heat from his breath. Felix gripped his cock tighter, dragging his fingers with the right pace to finally convince Sylvain to shuck his own slacks down from his hipbones. He moved too clumsily for a man as experienced as the gossips said. Felix couldn’t help but smirk at the knotted pant legs left tangled between his knees. Sylvain growled into the feel of it against his own lips.

“So fucking pretty,” Sylvain continued drunkenly.

“Don’t call me pretty,” Felix snarled. The venom in his voice drew dry when Sylvain palmed his cock against his stomach. Sylvain’s tongue traced the new scar tissue slashed along the length of his throat. It made the buzzing feel of thoron crackle down Felix’s spine.

“I want to fuck you,” Sylvain said into the corner of his jaw. He dipped his hips with the admission, pressing against the tangle of their arms to rut their cocks together. Felix slipped his idle hand free from the crush to claw a fistful of his hair.

“Do it,” he insisted again, tugging Sylvain’s head further backwards until his throat bobbed at the bend. “Why else do you think you’re here?”

Sylvain’s brow furrowed. It was the first time Felix had seen him look truly vicious. There wasn’t any time to comment on it. Sylvain sucked in a sharp breath and gripped him tight at the shoulders to flip him over, leaving Felix buried in his pillow as Sylvain tugged his crumpled pants to his heels.

“Sylvain,” he moaned, spine arching as Sylvain kneaded bruising touches into the flesh of his ass.

“Did you ever imagine it?” Sylvain asked him breathlessly, teasing back to their previous conversation while he drug his hands down the backs of Felix’s thighs.

“Yes,” Felix panted. He ground his hips against the disappointing friction of the sheets already wrinkled and sweat-damp from what they’d done. Sylvain made a hungry sound in reward for Felix’s honesty.

“Was it like this?”

Sylvain cocked Felix’s legs wider apart with the rushed kick of his knees. Felix sunk his teeth into his pillow at the feel of Sylvain’s breath against the base of his spine; the wetness of his tongue as he drew it along the soft cleft of his ass, his fangs too long to hide. Felix wondered if they left pink lines in their wake, dragging like they were against his skin. He moaned at the idea.

“Yes,” he answered, cheeks flamed.

“Oh, Felix,” Sylvain sighed. He slipped his fingers around Felix’s hipbones to bend him slightly upwards, enough that Felix lost what little pleasure he could find in grinding his aching cock against the bed. Felix whined at the loss, shivering as the night air teased at the precum he’d slicked himself with.

“Be good,” Sylvain ordered, which only made the fire in Felix’s face burn brighter. The grip at his hips became punishing as Sylvain resettled himself. Felix had nearly prepared a taunt to force him into touching him again when Sylvain finally nuzzled him apart with his chin and flattened his tongue against his rim.

“Ah,” Felix shivered. The bed creaked. Sylvain leaned deeper into him, all heat and wetness and the sharp warning of his dragging fangs. It quickly became a torture. Felix gasped and sighed into the crumpled mess of his pillow, jerking against the vices bracketing his hips as he felt Sylvain’s thick spit began to drip down his balls and streak his thighs. By the time he’d finally pressed the tip of his tongue inside him Felix’s eyes had blurred with frustrated tears.

“Please,” he gasped, “come on, you bastard.”

“It’s enough?” Sylvain asked huskily, his slick lips pressing sloppy kisses to the divots at the base of Felix’s spine.

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” Felix begged. “Come on.”

Sylvain’s grip loosened enough for Felix to buck his hips. He could feel the slick of the mess Sylvain had made smear against the man’s shuddering chest.

“Gods, Felix,” Sylvain said, his voice half-wonder, half-starved. “Who taught you to be like this?”

“Shut up,” Felix lost into the night as Sylvain flipped him again. Sylvain had stripped whatever timidness he’d worn before, replaced now with a rushed anticipation that was in full view as he crowded over him.

“You want it?” Sylvain slurred. He drug his thumb along Felix’s lower lip. Felix let him slip it inside his mouth, eyes narrowing as he felt him test the point of one of his canines. He bit down hard enough to taste Sylvain’s blackened blood.

“Shit,” Sylvain breathed. He pulled back and smeared the mess between his fingers, dark-drunk eyes fixated by the sticky blend stretching treacle-like between them.

“Sylvain,” Felix ordered. Sylvain obeyed. Felix’s breath caught in his throat at the brush of his wrist along his thigh and then the burning press of a finger slipped inside him. Felix writhed into the stretch, eyelids fluttering closed as Sylvain caught on and added another finger despite his clench.

“Fuck you,” Felix stuttered. Sylvain laughed breathlessly, the sound made nearly obscene by the twist of his fingers to sneak his knuckles deeper inside him.

“Tell me,” Sylvain said. He crooked his touch, searching the pliant heat inside Felix until he found the spot that made him thrash.

“Yes,” Felix spat. _Did he want it_ , how absurd, of course he did. It was the only thing that mattered. Burn the whole fucking world down for the price of feeling Sylvain inside him; to be owned by the man he’d chosen for once in his godforsaken life. How many times had he fantasized about it? Sylvain’s grip, just as tight as it was now, pulling him apart?

“Please, Sylvain.”

Sylvain flinched. For a moment Felix wondered if it he’d somehow managed to hurt him. Whatever it was, Sylvain pulled free of him to leave him gasping and empty, but only for long enough to wedge him upwards by the hips with the support of Sylvain’s thighs. Felix’s mouth watered as he watched Sylvain stroke himself once, twice, his motions brusque and paced to the quick heave of his chest.

It was too much, he knew as soon as he felt the thick head of Sylvain’s cock begin to push inside him; too much and too fast and yet somehow exactly what he’d wanted. His head tumbled backwards bonelessly, his throat drawn tight by the low moan Sylvain wrung out of him with every searing inch. 

“Fucking gods,” Sylvain sputtered, followed after with another nonsense phrase as he fitted his grip around Felix’s bruised hips and sheathed himself fully inside him. “You’re so fucking tight.”

The words bewitched Felix to move. He snuck a hand free to stroke himself. Sylvain growled and knocked it away, replacing it with his own as he matched the pull of his fingers with the slow roll of his hips. Felix gasped and bowed his back to chase the rhythm.

“Look at you,” Sylvain stammered in a broken chant, “look at you.”

His pace quickened. Each stroke hammered the breath from Felix’s lungs. He gasped through every inhale, too fuck-drunk to worry about how his cries must have been carrying down the cavernous hall outside. Sylvain’s free hand slipped up his side to trace the shape of his tight-strung muscles as he bent closer to him. He pressed his lips in tooth-scraping kisses across his chest. The way his weight bore down on him nearly tossed Felix off the edge; how it nocked his stroking hand tight between them, and forced the relentless drive of his cock into hidden places that made Felix feel like he was made from smoke.

“ _Ha_ — _ah_ — _Felix_.”

Sylvain’s voice was nearly a sob. Felix chased after the reason why, and found it in the way that Sylvain had buried his face in the crux of his shoulder, his nose pressed tight and desperate against the lifeblood pulsing through his veins. Felix’s chest swelled with a feeling he couldn’t quite define. All the same it swamped him, a tempest so wild that he could barely see the red of Sylvain’s tousled hair in the midst of all of the dark. 

“Do it,” Felix begged. He clawed hungrily at Sylvain’s back, teasing his fingers down his spine and urging him further forward. “Do it, please, _do it_. Sylvain, do it. Take it.”

The rolling muscles beneath Felix’s fingers corded tight. Quicksilver nothingness freckled across his vision as he felt Sylvain bury himself deeper inside him, and to the point that Felix understood what it meant to be speared, helpless as he was trapped between Sylvain’s bulk and the bed. He sucked hungrily at the swelter in the air and braced himself for the delirious drag that would come next, but found nothing other than the overwhelming pressure of Sylvain filling him to the brim. He bruised his fingers into Sylvain’s shoulderblades, and had nearly collected the wherewithal to taunt him into moving when he felt the damp heat of his mouth against his collarbone.

“Oh,” Felix moaned. Sylvain shivered. His broken gasp seemed to be enough to convince Sylvain of their reckless decision. Felix felt the rumble of Sylvain’s voice against his scar-speckled shoulder. Next the sharpness of his teeth; the same wicked points that’d left him feeling raw and naked-nerved.

“Syl—”, he started, but then Sylvain nodded forward. Felix realized dizzily that somehow he’d managed to fuck him twice: his cock still hard and overwhelming inside him, now paired with the deep pinch of his fangs in his flesh. For the first time in his life, Felix didn’t fight it. He melted into Sylvain’s greedy mouth instead. It turned his bones to ether. Sylvain swallowed mouthful after mouthful, his throat bobbing, breath quick and gasping. _Wanting him. Needing him. Devouring_. A wave quickly built inside Felix, born first low in his stomach and quickly cresting incandescent in his chest. His eyes rolled backwards in his skull as he came, pulsing in Sylvain’s unmoving touch between their bodies’ hot crush.

“ _Felix_.”

The milking pulse of Felix’s body spurred Sylvain to move again. It was different from before: fast, hard, nearly cruel. Felix slid into it bonelessly, letting Sylvain fuck him across the bed. It was wicked, maybe — his spend cooling on his stomach and splattering the sheets stained by his spilled blood, and how each overstimulated stroke of Sylvain’s cock knocked back more pieces of his consciousness. It didn’t matter. They were all just animals, in the end.

“Felix,” Sylvain babbled in another never-ending chant, his mouth at Felix’s shoulder again as he lapped at his feast. “ _Oh._ ” He tumbled sideways, pressing his brow against Felix’s, next the bridge of his nose, his cheeks, his jaw.

“Felix. _Fe._ ” He kissed him and shared the sweet-sour taste of his blood, smeared red and velvety across his mouth and down his chin. Felix kissed him back and swallowed his cry when he finally came, his cock throbbing inside him and forcing the both of them undone. 

For a moment afterwards they were both nothing but heavy limbs and gasping breaths. The sudden soreness of everything was nearly too much for Felix to stand. He squirmed against Sylvain’s softening cock, which willed enough life back into the other man for him to slowly pull out. He slicked his tongue against Felix’s bite marks in the same sluggish motion. Sylvain hovered over him afterwards, his dark eyes settled on him as he watched him shiver from the dripping seed spilling down the round of his thigh.

Even in the dark Felix could see the sunshine in Sylvain’s face; sienna freckles sprinkled across his cheeks. He looked like how he’d always known him, even if it wasn’t always the man into whom he’d been made.

“I love you,” Felix told him, voice hoarse from what they’d done. It should’ve been more difficult for him to say. He’d certainly buried the words deep enough in his chest for them to be well-guarded. Still, they came to him easily now, and even if they couldn’t be answered. It didn’t matter. It was enough. Sylvain sighed shakily and leaned forward to kiss him, this time tenderly, slowly, his arms strung tight and possessive around them both. Felix softened into the fortress of Sylvain’s body and thought about what would come next; about kings and emperors and the war, and how none of it seemed to matter, anymore. It didn’t have to be a battle.


End file.
